Lee Goldberg: Watch Me Die

Lee Goldberg: Watch Me Die

Lee Goldberg has been compared to Elmore Leonard. That is a big compliment to live up to for any writer. Problem for young Lee is he has trouble being Karl Hiaasen and that is on a good day.

Don’t get us wrong Crimeziners, we like his latest book Watch Me Die, we even liked his last book My Gun Has Bullets, even after Goldberg promised us that it would make us cackle like a TV laugh track—that good eh?

Young Lee has written a bazillion books it would seem, Crimezine wonders how he finds the time, especially as he is so deeply involved writing scripts for bottom of the barrel TV shows such as Seaquest, Martial Law and Baywatch [They have scripts?] a genre he calls T&A. [Chortle]. In his bio Goldberg also refers to a show he has written called Highwayman, which he lovingly refers to as utter crap.

Still, back to the task in hand. Watch Me Die is an unusual book, it concerns the adventures of a fictionally obsessed Security Guard, Harvey Mapes, who is tasked with following the beautiful wife of one of the residents who lives in the Spanish Hill community which he guards.

Mapes may have aspirations to be a Private Detective, like the fictional hero’s he idolizes, but he doesn’t quite have the skills required for the job. He is certainly no tough guy and in one confrontation gets beaten so badly he cries and wets himself. Oh dear.

While there are many jokes and allusions to the likes of Travis McGee, Shaft, and Jim Rockford to be found in this book, it is a quirk that can be annoying, rather than entertaining. The story does have redeeming features however, namely Mapes’ determination to tenaciously solve the mystery behind the death of his clients wife, when she inexplicably leaps from a bridge.

Humor is deeply subjective , it may be that you are a Goldberg veteran, if so you will no doubt reward yourself with the hardback $26 version of this book, complete with it’s eye wateringly repellant cover. If however you want to dip your toe in the waters of Goldberg’s comedic oeuvre, you would be well advised to try the kindle version, which retails at an altogether more reasonable $3.77.

According to Lee Goldberg, he:  lives in Los Angeles and still sleeps in “Man From UNCLE” pajamas. Hilarious.